Why a degree alone won’t prepare you for work

Aziz cites the British education writer Ken Robinson, whose 2006 TED talk made the point that there were hardly any public systems of education before the 19th century, and that they "all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism." Aziz sees it in the school day itself. Arrive at eight, sit in rows, do not answer back, and ask permission to go to the toilet.

None of that looks like a modern workplace. What it resembles, he says, is the workplace of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, which needed employees ready for the factory floor, who did as they were told, did not argue and did not bring ideas of their own. Many graduates, he says, leave university with an operating system built for 1965, not for 2026.

The second part of the problem is what Aziz calls the credentials trap, an idea he takes from the American investor Peter Thiel. Many people still believe success is impossible without a degree.

Thiel pays young people to leave university. Aziz quotes $100,000; the Thiel Fellowship's own site now puts the grant at $250,000 over two years, for people who skip or stop out of college. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, he notes, never finished.

He does not say university is worthless. The degree matters, just not as much as we have been taught to think. He admits he still tells his daughters to go, partly out of the same conditioning.

In his father's generation, a graduate was one of a small elite. In his own, not going to university was a disaster. Now a degree gives you more options, but someone who skips university and pushes themselves hard can be four years ahead in the job market. Not having a degree is no longer a catastrophe.

Then there is the cost. Aziz was in the first year to pay university fees in Britain, £1,000 a year, after years of free tuition, and the one protest he has ever joined was against them. The House of Commons Library confirms that fees of up to £1,000 were introduced in 1998. He puts today's fees at £10,000 a year or more; the cap in England for 2025/26 is £9,535.

Most graduates, he says, start working life owing £30,000 to £50,000 before their first pay cheque. The Department for Education forecasts that undergraduates who started in 2025/26 will enter repayment with an average debt of £45,800. Doctors and engineers have no alternative. For most people, Aziz doubts that debt makes sense.

In Britain, he argues, the most valuable thing university gives you is not the subject. It is leaving home and living alone or with friends. You manage your own money, do your own washing, ironing and cooking, pay the bills, register for your courses and get up at six to make the lecture. Nobody does it for you. Three years of learning to run your own life.

Where students live with their parents throughout, he doubts the cost is worth it for the certificate alone. It depends on what you want to do.

Universities, he says, produce people who think like employees, not founders. The employee says: I must not make mistakes. The founder asks: how can I create more value? The employee asks: what is required of me? The founder asks: what has to happen for us to move forward? The employee asks: who is responsible? The founder says: I am responsible for everything.

School rewards you for getting everything right. Business gives no prize for that. The market changes from one day to the next, and mistakes are part of working in it. If Cush Digital did today what it did ten years ago, Aziz says, it would fail.

School also teaches that life is a trade of time for money: eight to three, then nine to five. When the clock stops, the work stops, finished or not.

The people who get things done, in business especially, do not carry that clock in their heads. They wake early, push themselves and finish late. They order the day by their own priorities, not by the manager's list.

His advice to anyone in a job: hold on to it, but treat it as the place where you run your experiments. Do not be the person who arrives at nine and leaves at five. Be the one who arrives at half past seven and leaves at half past seven, and use the extra hours to push yourself.

Then get involved in things that are not your job. If you work in marketing, make friends in accounts. Learn how their work runs, and how yours affects it. Do the same with every department. How does the company win customers? How does it keep them? Aziz says he did this for fifteen years as an employee, learning from the people around him.

He sees a particular opportunity in the Gulf, and in Saudi Arabia above all, where Vision 2030 puts young people at the centre. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development frames its youth work around it. Aziz does not see those openings as reserved for Saudis alone, and points out that Sudanese families have lived in Saudi Arabia for generations.

His closing message to students: university should be half of your working day. If you are at university from eight until three, then from three until midnight is your second job. It can be training yourself, or a business on the side.

"The future belongs to the people who take the opportunity in front of them and push themselves."

For the job market itself, the episode on preparing for the 2026 job market goes further. If a side business is your next step, start with the episode on starting a business with no money.